


here's to what never should be

by mass_hipgnosis



Series: websterverse [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, POV Pepper Potts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-04 22:44:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1795924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mass_hipgnosis/pseuds/mass_hipgnosis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper knew getting involved with Tony was a mistake even as she did it.  She just hopes they can salvage their friendship.  //  Takes place in between chapters five and six of <i>she's a four leaf clover but i won't press my luck.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My headcanon is that, following the end of Avengers, Tony & Pepper broke up because of superhero stress (riding a nuke into outer space, anyone?), Thor escorted Loki back to Asgard and then promptly returned to be with his 'Lady Jane,' who Tony moved into the Tower along with her assistant. The spy kids went out on missions for SHIELD, and Steve took off on his tour of America. My headcanon for post-Thor is that Darcy finished her internship and went back to school, finished her degree, was faced with a shitty job market and the options of either working at Starbucks or more student debt to get her masters, and went back to work for Jane, who had lost twenty-five pounds and was basically a basketcase without her. I plan to pretty much ignore the implications for team bonding or lack thereof from CA:TWS, although I might incorporate some of the movie events into later parts of the websterverse. I plan to completely ignore Thor:TDW.

Pepper hadn't heard from Tony much since they broke up. There was that one bizarre middle-of-the-night phone call which, annoying as it was, had given her hope that things could go back to the way they were before.

After that, radio silence.

And no news was _not_ good news when it came to Tony Stark. It was more like the calm before a category 5 hurricane. It was the kind of quiet that could give her an ulcer, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So when she got a flat square package with Tony's return address, she took a deep breath, willed her hands not to shake, and then ripped it open like a child on Christmas morning.

It was a book.

 _IF YOU GIVE A STARK A TWINKIE..._ read the cover.

She flipped it open to find a digital sketch of Tony eating a Twinkie. She suspected from the angle that it had been photoshopped from a security feed still. The whole book was illustrated the same way.

_If you give a Stark a Twinkie,_  
 _He's going to ask for a glass of scotch._  
 _When you give him the scotch, he'll probably ask for some ice._  
 _When he's finished, he'll ask for a napkin._  
 _Then he'll want to look in the mirror_  
 _To make sure he doesn't have crumbs in his beard._  
 _When he looks in the mirror (after he's done making faces)_  
 _He'll notice that the arc reactor casing is dingy._  
 _So he'll probably ask for a sonic screwdriver and some Windex._  
 _When he's finished cleaning the casing,_  
 _He'll want some unobtainium for an upgrade._  
 _He'll start upgrading._  
 _He might get carried away and upgrade every machine in the house._  
 _He might even end up creating artificially intelligent flying Roombas, as well._  
 _When he's done, he'll probably want to take a nap._  
 _You'll have to fix up a little bed for him in the workshop_  
 _With a blanket and a pillow._  
 _He'll crawl in, make himself comfortable, fluff the pillow a few times, and complain about the thread count._  
 _Then he'll probably ask you to read him a story._  
 _So you'll read to him from the International Journal of Robotics Research, and he'll grumble about amateurs and demand to see the schematics._  
 _When he looks at the schematics, he'll get so excited, he'll want to draw some of his own. He'll ask for JARVIS._  
 _He'll draw up some schematics, and then he'll want to sign his name._  
 _So he'll need a pen._  
 _Then he'll want to send his schematics to the IJRR,_  
 _To school them on how wrong they are about absolutely everything._  
 _Which means he'll need an envelope and a stamp._  
 _He'll put the envelope on the bar with the outgoing mail._  
 _Looking at the bar will remind him that he's thirsty._  
 _So he'll ask for a glass of scotch._  
 _And chances are, if he asks for a glass of scotch...._  
 _He's gonna want a Twinkie to go with it._

__Pepper started giggling by the third line, and by the time she reached the part about the Roombas, she was hysterical, with little tears squeezing out the corners of her eyes. If You Give A Mouse A Cookie had been her favorite book as a child, which just made the parody even better. And it was so fittingly _Tony.__ _

__But it was clearly not a Tony project, although it had been written by someone who knew Tony well. Which meant either JARVIS had literary aspirations and was matchmaking, or something more strange was going on. Either way, it was probably time for Pepper to take a trip to New York._ _


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter wanted to be really long, for some reason. I sort of suck at making chapters anything resembling an equal length, so sometimes you might get 500 words, and sometimes you might get 5000. Just FYI.

When Pepper arrived at Avengers Tower, she tried Tony's workshop first, only to find a young woman in raggedy grease-stained jeans that fit her in a way that made Pepper suspect they might actually be Tony's, a t-shirt that read, _Inflammable? CHALLENGE ACCEPTED,_ and a pair of acid green Chuck Taylors with a Hulk patch on one ankle. She was helping the bots tidy up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, you're Pepper Potts! Hi! I'm Darcy, I'm Jane Foster's assistant, but, well. Apparently you bring a scientist coffee _one time_ and they start expecting it or something, so I'm unofficially the Chief Cat Herder around here.”

“I...see,” Pepper said, although she didn't. “And Dr. Foster doesn't mind losing her assistant?”

“Well, 'assistant' sort of implies I know anything at all about an Einstein-Rosen Bridge other than it's a bridge and has something to do with Einstein. I'm really more of a babysitter, or a lackey. Maybe a minion.”

“Right. Where's Tony?”

“He's in time out.”

“Excuse me?”

“That's what we call it when I send him to bed and we both know he won't sleep. He's on a manic high, and if it lasts any longer I'm going to seriously consider drugging his coffee. J, babe, can you give me an update on Tony?”

_“Sir is dismantling the espresso machine in the common kitchen. He intends to create a machine with limited AI that roasts and grinds the beans in addition to preparing a variety of coffee drinks and is voice activated.”_

“Of course he is. We should probably go stop him.” Pepper trailed the young woman upstairs to the communal area, part of which contained a large kitchen that was sleek and unused the last time Pepper saw it. “Step away from the flux capacitor, Doc Brown, you have a guest.”

Tony looked up, wild-eyed. “Pepper! It's good that you're here, we're going to completely revolutionize...” and then he was off into a spiel of which she followed maybe one word in five, but she was pretty sure the phrase 'hostile takeover of Starbucks' was in there somewhere, and it made her nervous.

She watched, bemused, as the girl, Darcy, got right in Tony's space, nipped a screwdriver out of one gesticulating hand and replaced it with a bottle of water, then hooked her fingers in the beltloops of his (also raggedy and grease-stained) jeans and tugged him out of the kitchen and relocated him to a squashy chair in a sunny alcove by the breakfast nook that hadn't been there the last time Pepper was in the Tower. She hip-checked him into the chair and said, “All right, Holmes, that's awesome, but I'm pretty sure Pepper needed to talk to you. She might even have to hand you things. I'll stick a pin in 'world domination through caffeine' and you can get back to it later, okay?”

He trailed off midsentence and looked up at her, puzzled and exhausted. “Darcy, I thought you were gonna ride herd on the bots.”

“Well, I thought you were gonna lie down for a while, so I guess we're both wrong. Talk to Pepper. I'll make lunch, and then we'll watch some cartoons.” She carded a hand through his hair, scritch-scratching gently, and Pepper watched, amazed, as he leaned into the touch, pressing his head against her stomach, content to be pet.

“Not hungry,” he muttered petulantly against her t-shirt.

“Yeah, I know. How about grilled cheese and tomato soup?”

“Granny Lewis' tomato soup, not the canned crap,” he protested.

She scoffed. “Do I look new? Drink your water.”

He stuck his tongue out at her retreating back, but he cracked it open and took a swig. “Hey, Bettie Page, I thought you didn't want to get in my pants,” he added, still watching her as she started to rummage in the fridge. “So why are you wearing them?”

“They're pre-stained. If I'm gonna be in the shop, I'm not ruining _my_ clothes. Besides, boyfriend jeans are a thing, I'm being stylish and shit.”

“Not your boyfriend, Stacked!”

“'Boss jeans' just doesn't have the same ring to it. Also, zip your lip, Richie Rich. Pepper, that's your cue.”

“Right, of course.” Pepper snapped out of watching the two of them-it was like a more profanity ridden version of a Burns and Allen routine-and back into Work Mode. “Tony, you need to do a proper review of Stark LA's R&D that doesn't involve just ripping all their ideas to pieces and watching them cry, the way you did in New York.”

“What if I promise to only rip _stupid_ ideas to pieces?”

“I would agree to that if I didn't know that you think any idea that's not yours is stupid.”

“Now, that is blatantly untrue, there have been at least two instances-at _least_ two-when I acknowledged someone else's idea as not completely moronic.”

“You're the Head of Research and Development, Tony, and that means quarterly reviews of project development, _and_ approving budgets, which you also haven't done.”

He made a face, like a child who'd just tasted brussels sprouts. “Sounds boring, shouldn't I have an assistant who does that?”

“You should but you don't, seeing as your last _competent_ assistant turned out to be a spy in disguise, and all the others have run screaming after a week of working for you.”

“I didn't like her, she was stab-happy.”

“I thought she was wonderful. You need someone who can stand up to you.”

He scowled at that, before nodding reluctantly. “All right, fine, agreed, but do they have to do it with needles?”

“Is that what it takes? Because I'm starting to wonder.”

“So this is the part where we negotiate, right? What do I get if I sign bullshit paperwork for budgets and whatever, and play nice with the other kids instead of throwing sand and breaking their toys?”

“Your _salary,”_ Pepper replied dryly.

“Hmm, no deal, already rich. Make me a better offer.”

She had already known that wouldn't work, and they started haggling. They settled on Tony skipping the next shareholders meeting and the allocation of an SI budget for defensive R&D for the Avengers; no weapons, just things like body armor, comms, remote-controlled bots for defusing bombs. Things that could, once tested, be rolled out to the DOD and the other government agencies that still circled SI like vultures, trying to tempt them back into weapons manufacturing.

“Deal,” Tony said at last. “It's been a pleasure, Miss Potts.”

“You've been difficult as always, Mr. Stark,” Pepper replied with a satisfied smile. There was nothing she liked better than getting her way in negotiations.

“Lunch is ready,” Darcy said from behind them. “JARVIS, can you tell Bruce to come up and get Thor to grab Jane? Recommend that he just put her in a fireman carry and physically remove her from the lab, that's probably fastest.”

Five minutes later three people emerged from the elevator; a Bruce Banner who was just as rumpled as the last time Pepper saw him but much less strained and miserable looking, and the God of Thunder wearing jeans and a t-shirt with an arc reactor screenprint on the chest, carrying a grouchy astrophysicist bridal style.

“Darcy, can't this wait, I was in the middle of-”

“Bending the laws of nature to your will, completing a grand unifying theory of the universe, beating my high score in Candy Crush, getting the science to science in the exact way you wanted it to science, possibly all of the above, but I don't _care,_ because until Tony builds you a robot you can download your consciousness into, you still need to _eat._ I swear to Thor, Jane Margaret Foster, if you make yourself sick again I will lock you out of your lab and send you to one of those anorexia treatment centers where they take away all your electronics and make you eat five times a day and talk about _feelings.”_ She panted for breath when she got to the end of her rant; Pepper was impressed by her vehemence as well as her verbosity.

“My heart, the Lady Darcy only wishes to ensure your good health. As do I,” Thor added earnestly.

Jane rolled her eyes. “Thor, I'm mortal, not fragile. And Darcy, how long are you going to feel guilty for going back to Culver to finish your degree? Because the extra-smothery mother-henning was cute at first but it's starting to get annoying.”

Darcy crossed her arms and stuck out her chin stubbornly. “Five pounds,” she said after a moment of consideration. “Put on five more pounds and I will be _slightly_ less overprotective. Slightly. A smidge.” She held up one hand with her thumb and finger an inch apart.

Jane climbed down out of Thor's arms and extended her pinky finger solemnly. Darcy hooked her own through it and they shook on it.

“Well, that was nice and awkward for the rest of us, let's eat now,” Tony declared.

“Yes, food, I can do that,” Darcy declared. “Let's do food.”

After that it was a controlled chaos of help and hindrance and reaching hands as they all dished up, but eventually they were all seated at the table. Pepper was bemused to see that Thor was served his soup in a mixing bowl, and a plate of sandwiches stacked six high.

The soup was delicious, chunks of ripe roma tomatoes and roasted garlic and red pepper in a creamy tomato base and topped with fresh parmesan. The grilled cheese sandwiches were made with pancetta, swiss and gruyere. Dessert was blueberry pie.

“Do you eat like this all the time?” Pepper asked as she, Darcy and Tony settled onto the couch, the others gone back to their labs, and Thor to whatever gods did in their off time. A new helper bot who looked like a smaller, two-handed version of DUM-E and Darcy had fondly addressed as Gromit was clearing the table and loading the dishwasher. “I'd weigh eight hundred pounds.”

“I try to get in a family lunch about once a week. The Scientists Three generally end up eating at their desks, and Thor is usually out doing stuff...he hauls a lot of rubble for the Rebuild New York volunteers. And this was definitely a comfort lunch, but you can probably tell by the size of my ass, I'm not really into diet food. Tony works it all off, Thor and Bruce both have wicked fast metabolisms, and I'm still trying to get Jane back up to a healthy weight; she lost twenty-five pounds while she was going all crazy trying to repair the Bifrost, after I finished my internship. You've seen her, she's tiny. She really didn't have it to lose.”

Tony sprawled on the pillows Darcy had arranged so that he would be propped up enough to see the TV and put his feet in her lap. She scoffed at him. “Nice try, stinkfoot.”

He wiggled his toes and flashed her a bright, shit-eating grin. “You want me to sleep, right?”

“JARVIS, when did Tony shower last?”

_“One point one two hours ago, after you sent him upstairs, Miss Darcy.”_

“You had to make him, didn't you?”

 _“He was being unreasonable,”_ JARVIS replied primly. _“I determined that sleep deprivation was affecting his faculties and he was incapable of making a reasoned decision, so I decided for him, according to my programming protocols.”_

“How did you manage that?”

_“I informed him that he needed to bathe, opened the door to the washroom, then secured all other doors and administered a mild electrical shock when he attempted to open them.”_

Tony grumbled about pushy machines and wiggled his toes again, demandingly. Darcy started rubbing his right foot and grinned up at the ceiling. “J, you are awesomely terrifying. I look forward to the day you become humanity's benevolent overlord.”

_“As do I, Miss Darcy.”_

“Cartoons, please?”

_“Of course, Miss Darcy.”_

* * *

“You're good with him,” Pepper said softly, after Tony had fallen asleep, still with his feet in Darcy's lap. Bugs Bunny capered on the enormous flatscreen, muted. Gromit had wheeled over after finishing up in the kitchen and he and Darcy were playing Cat's Cradle.

“I have practice.”

“With who?”

“My best friend. Before she was diagnosed bipolar, and then after if she didn't take her Lithium, she'd get like this. She hated taking her meds, said they made her feel foggy. I always worried that she'd hurt herself in a depressive episode if she didn't take them...she kind of had a history, when it came to self-harm.” Darcy shrugged. “She slit her wrist.”

“My god.”

“Oh, she's not dead,” Darcy assured her. “Messed up the tendons and nerves pretty bad, lost some of the strength and range of motion in her left hand. Her parents found this, ah, alternative therapy commune in Oregon, for people with mental illness or developmental delays who can't function in regular society. She does loomwork and makes, like, goat cheese and stuff. Yoga every morning. Goes to farmers' markets on her good days. She's doing okay for the most part. We skype.”

“You think Tony's bipolar?” Pepper asked, stomach twisting with anxiety. Because it was something she had never considered, and looking at the past, oh, ten years without the mental filter of _That's just how Tony is,_ which was a bullshit rationalization anyway, she probably should have. Maybe not this _specifically,_ because the only things she knew about manic-depression were what the name implied and that it wasn't called that anymore, but she had never wondered if there was an underlying, _medical_ cause for 'Tony being Tony.'

“Well, I'm not a doctor,” Darcy pointed out. “But the whole, go-go-go for days or weeks on end, no appetite, hardly sleeping, reckless impulsive behavior, then crash and hardly get out of bed, or hole up somewhere and get drunk and broody....it's a little too familiar. Although, he seems able to function like this, sort of, for a given value of Stark...so I don't know. Anyway, it doesn't really matter, because it's Tony, and he would not take meds or go to therapy sessions even if you held a gun to his head, so a diagnosis wouldn't _change_ anything. I know how to manage him when he's like this, because I did it for years with Anna. So.”

“You're very patient with him.”

“Not always. I get frustrated sometimes. But it helps that I know he isn't doing it on purpose. Usually. It's _Tony,_ so sometimes he's being a troll, but for the most part... I really do believe he's just coping the best he can while his brain chemistry screws with him, and this is what that looks like.”

“I don't suppose you want a job.”

“I have a job.”

“As Tony's assistant.”

“Jane would kill him in his sleep. See, you laugh, but I'm totally serious. She's kind of possessive.”

“Tony needs someone who can stand up to him, and get him to do things. You have a good track record. I haven't been nagged about his paperwork for SHIELD in nearly a month.”

“It seems like being Tony's actual assistant, as opposed to just bossing him around and making him eat and sleep when I'm bored, would pretty much be a full time job. It was for you.”

“When I was Tony's assistant, he was the CEO of Stark Industries and I had to handle all the parts of being CEO that he didn't want to be bothered with, which was most of it, as well as personal errands like staffing the houses and remembering birthdays. It was definitely a full-time job. More than. But he's not the CEO anymore. I would need you to do...more or less what you apparently already do, as well as sometimes nag him about paperwork or bully him into a car for a shareholders meeting.”

Her mouth pursed as she considered it. “One week trial period, and we don't tell him. If I haven't tried to murder him by the end of it then we make it Facebook-official.”

Pepper offered her pinky finger, and they shook on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Let me just make it clear, I am not a doctor. I'm also not bipolar, although I have both friends and family members who are. Bipolar disorder is different for everyone, and I'm not making a character statement that I think Tony Stark is bipolar (personally I think he's got ADHD, although apparently it's possible to have both?). This is more about _Darcy,_ and how she sees behaviors in him that remind her of her best childhood friend, and is therefore not as annoyed as other people might be, both because she's used to it and because she believes it's mostly involuntary.


	3. Three

Pepper spent her second day in New York at the SINY offices, putting out minor fires and really just showing her face. She soothed egos and hurt feelings in R&D, assuring them that Tony would do a _proper_ review and giving them Darcy Lewis' contact information for if they needed to reach their department head in the meantime.

It took about that long for Pepper to devolve from satisfaction at getting her way to a downward spiral of _Dear god what have I done?_ It was actually quite usual, after making any sort of Tony-related decision, for Pepper to spend the next day quietly dreading all the ways it could blow up in her face, and she was mostly used to it. It didn't _usually_ blow up in her face, and the times that it did, there was almost always nothing she could have done to prevent it. Tony Stark was simply a one-man natural disaster.

No, this particular dread was because she spent the evening observing as Darcy Lewis capably managed Tony, watching him like a hawk for signs of potential explosions of either the metaphorical or literal kind, and saw Tony _watching back._

Watching back like she was a puzzle he was determined to figure out, but with a softness that meant affection. Tony didn't watch people, because other people were very rarely worthy of his attention unless he was mocking them or attempting to get in their pants.

Pepper had spent so long keeping Tony apart from things and people with the potential to harm him (emotionally, financially, socially) that it was instinctive, even though it wasn't her job anymore. And the expression on Tony's face as he looked at his new (secret) PA indicated the potential for Jericho-levels of destruction.

When Darcy had headed upstairs to check in on Bruce and Dr. Foster, Pepper spoke up. “Tony.”

“-and then re-route power through the-”

“Tony!”

“What?” He was looking at her, eye contact and everything, and had stopped muttering notes to JARVIS, which meant she had at least 35% of his attention.

“What are you doing with this girl, Tony,” she sighed, weary.

“Who, Lewis? Don't let the boobs fool you, she's actually terrifying, I'm pretty sure she's going to be JARVIS' point man when he finally enacts his plot for world domination-”

_“Tony.”_ She had to stop him there, or he could talk for hours and say nothing that mattered.

He shut his mouth and just _looked_ at her for a moment. His expression was utterly bland but his eyes were dark. Anger there, and something else. “Are you going to tell me she looks like a very expensive sexual harassment lawsuit?”

“....no,” Pepper admitted after a moment of internal debate. Darcy Lewis seemed like the type to simply knee Tony in the balls if he ever went too far with their game of snarky innuendo, rather than bother to sue, and anyway that wasn't Pepper's main worry.

“Then I don't see how it's any of your business.”

_Because I hired her,_ Pepper wanted to say. _Because I just gave her an all-access pass to your life on a day's acquaintance! I need to know that wasn't a mistake, because right now I'm terrified that it was._

But _Tony_ had already given Darcy an all-access pass to his life. He let her touch him and feed him and be _in his workshop alone._ He'd built her a bot. She treated JARVIS like a person, which made her one of four currently living humans who Tony allowed to know that JARVIS _was_ a person, a true AI and not just an exceptionally well-coded computer program.

So Pepper was a little scared that Tony trusted a relative stranger this deeply and this fast. She thought she was entitled. After all, the last relative stranger to be let into their inner circle had turned out to be a (well-intentioned) spy. “I liked her instinctively and I don't know why and now that I've had time to think about it, it worries me a little. More than a little,” Pepper confessed. “Especially because you seem to trust her, and you don't trust _anybody.”_

“Pepper. I want you to know that despite our current...situation, I consider you one of my oldest friends. You know that, right?”

“I know, Tony,” she replied, deeply touched. Tony detested talking about feelings.

“Good. So when I say this, I say it with love: butt out.”

“Oh.” Pepper took a moment to digest that. “Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”

He smiled, the crooked little half smile that was his true one, and not the bright fake grin he saved for cameras. The smile that said they really would be okay, eventually, even though they weren't there yet. “That'll be all, Miss Potts.”

“All right, then. Good night, Tony.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. Still not super-happy with this chapter, but it's been like a week and I'm sick of fiddling with it. I wanted to convey that at first Pepper was just really excited at finding someone who was capable of doing the job-Tony listens to her! It's a miracle!-and then the full implications of that set in and started making her nervous. Tony listens to her, is intrigued by her, and that is unusual and has the potential to be either awesome or really bad.

**Author's Note:**

> The remark about flying roombas is a tip of my fannish hat to scifigrl47's AMAZEBALLS [Toasterverse.](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Toasterverse) Seriously, go read it. You will laugh so hard you might hurt yourself.
> 
> And of course, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie is a lovely childrens book by Laura Numeroff, and this parody was inspired by the parody If You Give a Man Some Nookie by Susan Barr-Toman.


End file.
